Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Acknowledgements
- List of acronyms
- Part 1 Setting the scene
- Part 2 Benefits for unemployed people
- Part 3 Benefits for disabled people
- Part 4 Benefits for children and families
- Part 5 Benefits for retirement
- Part 6 Towards a welfare class?
- References and further reading
- Index
22 - The demography of pensions’ growth
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Acknowledgements
- List of acronyms
- Part 1 Setting the scene
- Part 2 Benefits for unemployed people
- Part 3 Benefits for disabled people
- Part 4 Benefits for children and families
- Part 5 Benefits for retirement
- Part 6 Towards a welfare class?
- References and further reading
- Index
Summary
Summary
The increase in the Retirement Pension caseload between 1971 and 1998 was driven almost entirely by demographic factors.
Increased life expectancy more than offset a 35% fall in the number of births.
Of the total growth in the pensioner population (over the slightly shorter period 1973-94) 46% was accounted for by increased survival after retirement.
Migration had little effect on pensioner caseloads; less than 2% of pensioners were born abroad.
A slight fall in the proportion of female pensioners – who are still less likely than men to have occupational pensions in their own right – will have slightly eased the pressure on the means-tested Income Support caseload. So did reforms in 1993 that transferred financial responsibility for supporting residential care from social security to local authority social services departments.
The increase in pensioners living alone, rather than with younger kin, will have increased claims for Income Support.
The size of the pensioner population is driven almost entirely by demographic factors. It is determined, first, by the number of people reaching pensionable age, itself a consequence of the number of births 60-65 years earlier and the rates of survival over the intervening years. Second, it is affected by the age-specific death rates of the pensionable population and third, by in-migration and out-migration, although the latter is not very important since pensions are payable to people living abroad. The only non-demographic factor of importance affecting the number of pensioners is the propensity to continue in employment beyond pensionable age. In Britain, people who work after pension age do not receive state pensions, but instead earn increments that are added to their basic pension when they retire or reach the age of 65 for women or 70 for men.
Each of these factors – cohort size and survival, migration and effective retirement age – is considered in turn in this chapter, which ends with a discussion of gender differentials and living arrangements.
Cohort size and survival
It is evident that the increase in the number of people reaching pensionable age is determined more by survival rates than by variations in the size of birth cohorts. Birth numbers fell by about 35% between 1905 and 1935 but the number of people reaching pensionable age 60-65 years later actually increased by about 3% (CSO, 1998).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Making of a Welfare Class?Benefit Receipt in Britain, pp. 251 - 258Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2000